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Saturday, June 2, 2012

'Livia and Katelyn are sisters. The girls and I went to the fabric store Monday morning and they each picked out a pre-gathered dress fabric that tickled their fancy (I am a fan of fancy tickling) and they went to spend a day at the zoo with their dad and brother and grandfather.

I think the two of them were humoring me just a bit but they picked thoughtfully and seemed pleased. If you don't sew it can be a bit of a mystery when you are shown flat, kinda wrinkly fabric and told that this will be a dress. But the girls are polite and well mannered children so they smiled, looked a teeny bit puzzled and went off for the afternoon.While they were gone I put together little cotton sundresses for each of them. It was easy and fun and I hoped they'd like them. I always hope that people will like the things I sew but I am always not sure. I have this inner double-think-monologue whereby I become convinced that it -whatever IT I am currently working on (even though I might like it) - has suddenly turned hideous and not at all lovely and it won't fit and it is stupid and ugly and all home-madey and not at all what they pictured in their mind's eye and it is flawed in unimaginable ways and burdened. Yep, the garment is burdened (poor thing) by my hyper critical eye and the knowledge that I just might have sewn this wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers (and certainly Vera Wang never does that.) All of this attaches itself to the poor, blameless garment and weighs it down in my mind until it is an ill-fitting, plaid gunny sack, a short sleeved suit, high water mom jeans in orthopedic shoes...it is just wrong. The thing I loved only moments before has become ...dubious.

*puts on getting back to the point hat*

ANYWAY, I laid the dresses out on my bed and and the dresses I hoped the girls would like them at least well enough. They came home many hours later aaannnd.......they loved them! And that's the pay off. That's the power of sewing. That's the mighty banisher of insecurities for both sewer and sewee (is that a word?) That is the RED DRESS MOMENT. Katelyn and Eliviya spun and twirled and posed and giggled and felt special and fabulous. They made my heart happy. Man, I do love that part!

My Traveling Red Dress is All Grown Up and Leaving Home

This is the Stig. She has cunningly disguised herself by wearing dark glasses because, unlike other pictures of the Stig she is also wearing her head (you'll see.) The Stig is wearing one incarnation of my Traveling Red Dress...I'll explain.

So now we are at the part where I need a derby...or a top hat. Up there. That's my red, Red Dress. I made it. I made a wrap skirt gathering of yards and yards of tulle with a big 'old satin sash so it'll fit most everyone. I made three different corset tops in three different sizes from Stig size through a medium and on to a more generous size ensuring (I hope...it's the plan anyway) that one or the other will fit most anyone. I made it so you can wear the skirt and your Jammie top if that's what makes you feel fabulous.

I made it coz I love it and now I've put it in the mail and I'm all "Gleeps"and "what have I done?" and so I need a derby (or top hat) coz the dress just cries out for one and I could wear a hat and hide under my sewing cabinet and chew on the electrical cord.

The thing is...I've made a dress that requires printed instructions and numerous, headless, pictures of the Stig (for the uninitiated info on the StigCan be found on Top Gear UK, which you should watch ) demonstrating the care and feeding of the dress. Instructions for heaven's sake! Thats's not weird. Not at all. Perhaps I should elaborate.

....I really wanted the dress to be a fantasy, a fantasy that lots of people could share but people are all kinda different shapes so it couldn't be a real dress it had to be, well, this dress (and because I'm me) this dress needed instructions. Greaaat...I made a dress that requires illustrated photographs and a website.*gnaws nervously*

Funny thing is though, I still love it. I've seen grown-up-type women laugh and twirl just like 'livia and Katelyn did in their not red, red dresses. This dress, It feels like something you might wear to a Tim Burton circus or to run down the street or sit barefoot in the grass. It feels like a dress you'd never wear but you are. It feels special as hell even though I know where the mistakes are. I've sent it off for the first (not people I know) real world experience and I am beyond being all geeked out and blarrgghh. I want y'all to love wearing it and to send me pictures and to see that it's not a dress in the dressmaker sense it's a red dress...it's a moment.

This is Annie. We love her. This is how the dress will find it's way to you.

Please leave requests for the dress in your comments I will try keep the dress traveling as long as it holds up and people are willing to forward it to the next address or back to me. I would love it if you would send pictures to me (all that info is included in the illustrated guide to dress management.)

Thanks to my darling girl who did the math and helped me wrestle the skirt around the needle and who mailed it out coz I might have thrown up at the task...as I said "I'm all geeked out and blaarrggghh over here...under the table...wearing a hat...and playing with sharp things."

Monday, February 13, 2012

This morning, as I turned east on Hwy. 20 at 6:40 AM, I was beyond delighted to see the sun just cresting the horizon. For the first time weeks, no months, I would be arriving at work in almost daylight. In sunlight. Well, that makes me happy and so, in no particular order, it goes on the list:

SMALL THINGS OVER WHICH I HAVE NO CONTROL THAT MAKE ME OUT OF PROPORTION HAPPY

1.) Starting work in the daylight. It is bliss.

2.) The smell in the air and the quality of the light after sudden midwestern thunderstorm just before sunset. If you looked up delightful there might be this phenomenon instead of a definition. (If you could somehow make the page glow and smell awesome.)

3.) Those big clouds that aren’t storm clouds but are fluffy on top but flat on the bottom like they’re sitting on glass. Like Under the Dome might have looked but way super-higher up and not in a we’re-all-going-to-die, Stephen King way.

4.) When, all of a sudden, I can hear my mother’s voice in my head-not just remember it. That one feels harder to explain but trust me...it’s wonderful and comes of it’s own volition.

5.) When Orion is starts to descend from the night sky. Orion is winter constellation ‘round here...‘nuff said.

6.) That random day in early spring. That warm day. That stolen day. The day that the air feels like velvet and you don’t need a jacket and the sun is warm even though the shadows might be cool. That day. The day that would cause my dad to inhale deeply and announce: “This is a day the Lord has made!” ..........that day.

7.) Really good mustard. That's all. I just love really good mustard.

I know there are others but these came quickly to mind. What things beyond your own control make you furiously happy?

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

My grandmother (my mother’s mother) was a dressmaker. She was a business owner from an immigrant family at a time when women didn’t own businesses. She was amazing. She could take apart a man’s suit and make a little girl’s glen plaid school dress with interchangeable white linen collars. She sewed special dresses for my sisters and me through our childhood and as we grew up to be teenagers and adults.

School dresses, Easter dresses, Homecoming dresses, Prom dresses and Wedding dresses. Not home made looking substitutes for the real thing but beautiful dresses, custom made dresses, special dresses. Dresses for girls whose parents could never have afforded even the K-Mart version.

She kept up with fashion trends and made fantastic, fabulous, beautiful, one-of-a kind dresses. I remember how wonderful I felt. I also remember standing during fittings and alterations and meticulously measured hems for what seemed like an eternity and, when posture and attention flagged, feeling the quick poke from a dressmaker’s pin followed by “Stand still Kasha!” The lady could sew and she was a dead aim with a stick pin.

I did not learn to sew from her. (I did learn to love sewing and what sewing could do and what it meant. I learned that it was powerful, magical juju but she never did actually teach me how to do it.) I learned to sew on my own by trial and error and (maybe) instinct borne of watching her.

I was fearless. Patterns? Pah! Who needed ‘em? (Well I did- but not always.) When I was sixteen I made an outfit in about an hour and a half for a date that same evening. The outfit lasted only just long enough to get home before the close-cut seams gave out.

As I got older and a bit more skilled and a lot more broke and I sewed like a crazy person. I even made jeans!

Right???.... I know! Crazy person.

I made this little person and her blue checked sunsuit

Percy Bear needed a night shirt and frequent bear surgeries

I made play clothes and school dresses and party clothes and doll clothes and birthday presents and Halloween costumes. If I couldn’t afford it I tried to find a way to sew it. I sewed a lot.

These days I sew less out of necessity and more because it the notion tickles my fancy or because I think it will be fun or because it presents a challenge OR ...

(here we are going to devote a moment or two to the fancy tickling portion of our program before finishing this thought.)

Grace was obviously not as pleased with her boots as I had hoped.You're kinda tickled tough, right?

Emma got a christening bonnet (she was unimpressed.) Monkey needed a jacket that matched Miles’s and they both clearly needed matching hats. Jack and Mary...well, I just felt like making them coz I love them on Jack's Big Music Show and Carl won his match in tiny pants with a Superman symbol.

Like I said, it has to tickle my fancy (minds out the gutter please) or touch my heart.

Last summer I sewed terry swim robes like it was a calling coz they were fun and then this past Christmas I made aprons for nearly everyone I know (the cooks) and pillow cases for everyone else (the sleepers?).

I also started a big ol’ pile of pillow cases for Conkerr Cancer which is a really cool organization that makes super-duper, fancy, one-of-a-kind pillow cases for critically ill kids to have for their very own in the hospital. Anyone who sews at all has a fabric stash (you know who you are) that needs thinning and the pillow cases are incredibly satisfying to make and to give. You’ll make lots once you start. You don’t need a pattern. Just go here: HOW CAN I MAKE ONE?

(Now here’s the thought finishing part. We're back to the OR left dangling above.)

...OR because some little girl is all grown up and her heart’s desire is beyond her reach and because everyone should have that Red Dress Moment...

There they are up there. A few of my girls in their red dresses. Couldn't you eat those smiles for lunch?

When I read The Traveling Red Dress my fancy was well and truly tickled and my heart was emphatically touched. My own personal little girl (she’s up there on the right- the blue sunsuit doesn’t fit anymore) and I decided that we would make a Red Dress (a fabulous, fantastic Red Dress) and that we would send it traveling.

I make my dresses because I know what that one wonderful, just for you dress feels like. Everyone should have that moment. That dress. The one that makes you feel lit up inside. I can’t make y’all a wedding dress but I can send you a #TravelingRedDress so get ready to wear the living daylights out it when it gets to your house.UPDATE: The Red Dress will be enjoying a brief engagement in it’s city of origin before it goes traveling first to the east and then to the west coast. If you need a Red Dress moment just let me know. Trust me, it will fit you. Red Dresses are magical and also I’m making sure.Thanks to Jenny Lawson TheBloggess on Twitter for fanciest tickle (again- out of the gutter- it’s a simple, if lame, turn of phrase) I’ve felt in a long time (man, I just keep digging that hole deeper) and to Maureen Johnson outstanding YA author and Twitter Icon (yes, that is blatant pandering and sucking up) for agreeing to wear my #TravelingRedDress.

UPDATE NUMBER TWO:

THESE ARE THE FABULOUS FABRICS

I'm delighted and excited to show you the fabrics for our Traveling Red Dress. As I've said "red dresse (even when they're not red) are magical" and this one will fit just about everyone. There will be three corset tops which should lace or up or down to go from size nuthin' to size fabulously abundant with a fantasy skirt of matching tulle suitable for twirling.

I'm sewing as fast as my fingers can carry me and my fancy can tickle me (again with the mind in the gutter!). I'm excited...I hope y'all are as well.